Monday, February 8, 2016

Ask & Answer Questions: Exploring ELA

Last week, I announced that I was going to begin a blog series on exploring the ELA standards. Today, I bring you the first blog post in the series. I am going to start with the first standard in Literature AND Informational domains.

[Ask and Answer Questions]

Here are the six standards we will be studying for this blog post.

The ask and answer standard spans first, second, and third grade as well as both domains (informational and literature).

5 Key Tasks for Teachers:

1. Get students' prior knowledge on questioning with an anchor chart and lots of accountable talk.

Make sure students know how to answer a text. Try with a very basic fictional text that they know well, such as The Three Little Pigs or Goldilocks. Have them created a few questions and answer a few questions with a partner. If you're studying informational texts, show images of items and ask them to create questions from the pictures. Or find a popular topic that primary students like, such as dinosaurs or sharks and ask questions for them to answer.

Teaching students to answer questions is much easier (at least for me) than teaching them to ask questions. Students have answered questions their entire lives. They know the skill of listening to the question and figuring out the answer. The skill of reading a text and asking questions before, during, and after is a tough skill in teaching.

Using passages and real fiction/nonfiction stories are very important for kiddos to get practice. Whether you're teaching them to ask about an informational topic or a fictional story they just read, students will need to learn how to answer text-based questions and ask questions based off pictures and events in the text.

Whether they're called thick, thin, strong, simple, or easy-peasy, teaching students to get DEEPER with their questioning is very important. We started by making an anchor chart and using given questions on the topic, sharks. Students have to decide if they question asked was a strong question or a simple question.

Students will need practice on defining the difference between strong and simple questions. BUT don't stop with just that activity. As they work through asking and answering question lessons (and even in day to day lessons), make sure that students answers are always strong and text-based.

Text-evidence is a huge skill for primary students. Teaching them how to
find an answer by looking back in their text will help them throughout
middle school, high school, and college. It isn't always, but the more
they practice, the stronger they will get.

5. Let them practice in many different ways.
While passages and comprehension questions are always a huge skill for students to master, we don't want to limit them to the same activity each day. During my centers and small group activities, I would try to use task cards and interactive notebook activities to help practice the same skill while still changing things up.

Hi Jessica, How kind of you to share these fabulous posts. There are many excellent ideas for anchor charts and engagement activities. I know I'll be referring to them as I begin the new school year. Question, do you have TpT products that I can purchase to supplement the activities? (grade 2/3) Thanks again, Marsha

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